4 Steps to Making Your Mornings Super Productive

You’ve probably read stories about extremely successful people who make it a point to wake up early in the morning. Sir Richard Branson, Tim Cook and Jack Dorsey are some of the most popular early risers. If you want to be more productive, waking up earlier than you usually do is a good place to start.

However, waking up early is easier said than done. If you aren’t used to being up at 6 AM, you’ll probably be groggy and find it difficult to concentrate on anything productive. But there’s a way around this problem. Waking up early is a discipline and you can train your body and mind to support your intention to get work done in the morning. By employing the following steps, you can trick your own brain into helping you get up earlier than usual.

1. Keep your alarm clock in a place that’s unreachable from your bed.

Most people are used to snoozing and ignoring alarms if your smartphone or alarm clock is within arm’s reach from your bed. By putting your alarm device somewhere you have to get up and walk to, you’re taking the crucial first step – getting out of bed at a specific time.

2. The first task you perform in the morning should be simple.

Even after you’ve crawled out of bed and silenced your alarm, your body and mind will still be clamoring for the comfort of your bed. You can get around this problem by giving yourself something easy to accomplish in the morning. This could be something as easy as drinking a glass of water or taking a deep breath and smiling.

Accomplishing this simple task allows you to start your day with a small victory and generates momentum for the rest of your morning.

3. Decide what you’re going to wear in the morning before you go to bed.

If you want to stick to a new habit like waking up early, you need to make it as easy as possible for yourself to follow through. Rifling through your wardrobe to pick what you’re going to wear might not seem like a huge task. However, if you eliminate the need to make this decision in the morning by putting the clothes you’re going to wear somewhere you can find them easily, you free up some crucial mental bandwidth.

4. Make your to-do list for the morning the night before.

At this point in your morning, you’ve already made some good choices. If you’ve already made a to-do list before you go to sleep, you can just take a look at it in the morning and get to work. Keep the list short (1-3 items) and then start working on it in the morning. Make sure you only put the most important tasks on your list. Consider the following examples.

Write a new blog post on intermittent fasting.

3 sets of pushups followed by 3 sets of pull-ups.

Send invoices to my clients.

Having a list like this makes it much easier to begin your day, since you are accomplishing some important tasks in the morning. Even if other commitments take up the rest of your day, you can be secure in the knowledge that you’ve already done a lot of important work.

Waking up early is a practice that is tremendously beneficial for anyone looking to improve their lifestyle or earn more money. It takes a little bit of willpower. But if you have the right plan in place, you’ll soon find yourself effortlessly getting out of bed early and starting your day in a productive fashion.